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That which We Carry

In my backpack, there are notebooks, folders with class materials, a pencil case (which contains pencils, a pencil sharpener, markers, and highlighters), my stick bag, my identification, my smartphone, $5, napkins, masks, and a calculator. My notebooks contain, in addition to course notes, a variety of whims I conceived capriciously at various times and felt inclined to write down.   My folders contain many of the materials which support my learning at school, while my pencil case and calculator provide me with the most basic supplies I need. My identification enables me to obtain lunch every day at school. My stick bag, which contains the sticks and mallets I use to play percussion instruments, reminds me of an ideal to which I aspire: a connection to music that reminds me of my roots and helps me find peace.  My mom puts some money in my backpack in case I want to purchase snacks at lunchtime. She also puts napkins and masks in my backpack in case I ever feel ill. Since I ha...
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Flory Jagoda: Keeper of the Flame

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For years, she remained silent. Then, she brought an ancient legacy to life. On December 21 st , 1923, a child was born to an ambitious mother and an errant father in Sarajevo. Little did the infant girl know that she would become the bearer of her family’s ancient legacy, the “keeper of the flame” of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Sephardic Jewish community. Flory Papo had family roots in the Bosnian village of Vlasenica, where her mother, Rosa Altarac, had grown up. Her ancestors had come from Sarajevo after settling there under the auspices of Sultan Bayazid II, the ruler of the Ottoman Empire. Bayazid welcomed the Jews into his lands after the Catholic rulers of the Iberian Peninsula expelled them.  Centuries later, the Altarac family, descended from those Sephardic Jews, continued to preserve its Judæo-Iberian customs, music, and identity. They spoke Ladino, a mediæval Jewish language derived from Old Spanish. As Flory would recount in  an interview with the United States Holoc...
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The Sephardic Conundrum: An Effort to Atone for the Past

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“I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.”  – Tom Stoppard In 1492, the Catholic monarchs of Spain ordered the expulsion of between 40,000 and 100,000 Iberian Jews, known as Sephardim. Four years later, Portugal followed Spain’s example.  Prohibited from practicing their faith in their homelands, many Sephardim sought refuge abroad, settling in the Ottoman Empire and North Africa. The ensuing diaspora divided the Sephardic community into four groups. The Eastern Sephardim, the most recognizable of the four, settled in the Ottoman Empire, where they preserved Judæo-Spanish customs and developed an unique language (Ladino) and literary tradition. Meanwhile, the North African Sephardim developed a  different  language,  Ḥaketía, and blended their traditions with those of the North African Maghrebi Jews.    Spanish and Portuguese Jews, those who remained in their homelands, faced constant ha...
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Spelling in English: Our Unique, Eclectic, Idiosyncratic Mess

The United States novelist Mark Twain once asserted that “Anyone who can only think of one way to spell a word lacks imagination.” If this is the case, the history of spelling in the English language certainly attests to the copious creativity of its speakers! The spelling system of the English language is infamous for its apparent anarchy. Albert Einstein once lamented about “the treacherous spelling” of the language, stating, “When I am reading, I only hear it and am unable to remember what the written word looks like.”   Anglophones may be inclined to wonder what lies beneath the chaotic surface of multigraphs, silent letters, and letters with various uses.   “The story of English spelling,” observed the British linguist David Crystal, “is the story of thousands of people – some well-known, most totally unknown – who left a permanent linguistic fingerprint on our orthography.”    The story began during the Middle Ages, around the 8 th  century, when Irish mis...
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